Tuesday, September 15, 2015

‘Miss Saigon’: Better Late Than Never

Filipino actor Jon Jon Briones as the Engineer in the 2014 London revival of ‘Miss Saigon’

This is
kind of a big deal for me.

I think
that one of the major artistic issues of the last quarter-century or so was
Broadway’s casting controversy over the musical Miss Saigon in 1990. The event has now faded into the nether
reaches of time and memory, but it’s something that’s been sticking in my craw
ever since.

Most of
you are probably familiar with the title Miss Saigon, the sung-through musical,
adapted from Madame Butterfly by tunesmith Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain
Boubil, the French team behind the wildly popular musical staging of Les
Misérables. Under the producership of Cameron Mackintosh (who also produced Les Miz, Cats, and Phantom of the Opera, among other shows), Miss
Saigon premiered
on London’s West End in 1989 with Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce in the lead male
role of the Engineer, a pimp who runs the brothel in war-torn 1970s Vietnam
that indentured the young prostitute title character, Kim. (This was after a worldwide search to
find a specifically Asian actress to play Kim, finally finding Lea Salonga in the
Philippines.) The logic of the
musical’s plot calls for the Engineer to be a Vietnamese national, but a white
actor was cast in the role, the creative team said, because the character was
“Eurasian.” However, nowhere in Miss
Saigon’s original
lyrics (since revised) is the character’s European heritage mentioned, nor is
such a heritage germane to the story.
Ostensibly, the Engineer was a full-blooded Vietnamese who was labeled
“Eurasian” merely to accommodate a white actor in the role. And Pryce opened the role of the Engineer in the West End wearing eye prosthetics to give his eyelids an epicanthic fold. In 1990, the year after its London
premiere, Mackintosh announced that he planned to bring Miss Saigon to Broadway the following year
and to have Pryce reprise his role as the Engineer in New York.

In 1990,
I was friends with a number of Asian American actors, and I would often hear
stories of their struggles about being racial minorities working for an
industry whose primary goal was to attract the majority white audience. This meant that not very many roles
were written for ethnically Asian performers, and if a role wasn’t written
specifically as a character of color, I was told, minority actors would seldom
be considered for it. This meant that
my Asian American thespian friends didn’t work all that often, and they needed
to support their acting careers with day jobs. Complicating this was the practice of “yellowface,” which is
the derogatory nickname for applying cosmetics (of any color) to white actors in order for
them to play Asian roles. So, in 1990,
the playing field was decidedly tilted: Caucasian actors — not only because of
their talent, but also because of their race — had many opportunities in the
entertainment industry, but Asian American actors had few. Also, the industry, through the practice
of “yellowface,” enabled white actors to play Asian characters without a
commensurate practice to enable Asian actors to play white characters.

When it
opened in 1991, Miss Saigon boasted Broadway’s first Asian male lead (non-supporting)
role in 15 years, since the Stephen Sondheim musical Pacific Overture in 1976. In all that time, Asian American actors
were — for all intents and purposes — “racially disqualified” from playing male
leads on the Great White Way. Miss
Saigon’s Engineer
would have been a great opportunity for an ethnically Asian actor to open a
lead role on Broadway, but with Mackintosh’s announcement that Pryce would
re-create the character in New York, that rare possibility was whisked away.

Jonathan Pryce, wearing eye prosthetics, in the original 1989 London production of ‘Miss Saigon’

Because
Pryce was a British national, Mackintosh had to apply for an H-1B visa (a visa
which means that no one else can do the job) for him to appear on Broadway, an
application that needed to be approved by the American performers’ union,
Actors’ Equity, to go forward.
Advocates of Pryce’s participation in the production called it an
example of “non-traditional casting” (see below). The Asian American actors and their supporters complained to
Equity that Broadway’s first Asian male lead in 15 years was automatically
going to an actor without any racial constraints on his career and that no
Asian actors had been seriously considered for the part. After some discussion, Actors’ Equity
denied Pryce’s application for an H-1B visa, issuing a press release to explain
their position:

Today [August 8, 1990], the
Council of Actors’ Equity resumed its deliberation regarding the proposed
casting of Jonathan Pryce in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon. After a long and emotional debate, the Council has decided
it cannot appear to condone the casting of a Caucasian actor in the role of a
Eurasian and has therefore voted to reject the producer’s application to permit
Mr. Pryce, who originated the role of the Engineer in London, to recreate his
performance in the American production.

Equity’s
decision is in no way meant to reflect on Mr. Pryce, whose excellence the
Union, once again, acknowledges.

The
question of Mr. Pryce’s appearance at [sic] the Engineer has prompted a long-overdue public
debate over the issues of non-traditional casting and the lack of job
opportunities for ethnic minority actors, in this instance, those in the Asian
community.

Actors’
Equity was created by actors to protect the actor and improve employment
conditions. When Equity membership
believes that they are in some way being humiliated or ignored, the Union is
bound to investigate the claim and respond. The casting of a Caucasian actor made up to appear Asian is
an affront to the Asian community.
This casting choice is especially disturbing when the casting of an
Asian actor, in this role, would be an important and significant opportunity to
break the usual pattern of casting Asians in minor roles.

The Asian
community of American Equity actors has strongly supported the Union’s
condemnation of the proposed casting of the Engineer in Miss Saigon and has urged the Union to reject
this application, in full awareness that many jobs may be lost to actors of
Asian background if the production is cancelled.

For
years, ethnic actors were denied access to roles that were not expressly
written for the ethnic performer.
To put it another way, ethnic actors were largely excluded from working
in the theatre. In response,
Actors’ Equity has vigorously advocated the creation of equal casting
opportunities for its minority members.
Equity originated the use of the term “non-traditional casting” as an
avenue of increasing employment for minority actors. This policy is defined as the casting of ethnic actors in
roles where race or gender is not germane to the character. Non-traditional casting was never
intended to be used to diminish opportunities for ethnic actors to play ethnic
roles. The contract agreed to by
Equity and the League of American Theaters and Producers provides that all
parties agree “to continue their joint efforts toward, and reaffirm their
commitment to the policy of non-discrimination, and to an on-going policy of
furthering the principles of equal employment opportunity. It is the desire of the parties that
employment opportunities for Equity’s multi-racial membership be improved, and
that the stage reflect a multi-racial society” (emphasis added). [Emphasis and parentheses in original.]

The
producer, Cameron Mackintosh[,] was quoted in the Sunday Times of London as stating that “I
subscribe to the view that acting roles should be played by the best person and
that colour of skin has got nothing to do with it.” The casting of Mr. Pryce would not be so objectionable if
Mr. Mackintosh was also willing to apply this standard elsewhere and cast
visibly ethnic actors in the numerous productions of Les Misérables which have created nearly 400
jobs for Equity actors. Instead,
Mr. Mackintosh and the producers of other shows have insisted all too often
that the text of a play does not allow the casting of ethnic actors and have
consistently refused to consider the talent of minority members for
employment.

The
“exhaustive search” for an Asian actor to play the role of the Engineer has
been much publicized, but, as Geoffrey Johnson, of Johnson, Liff, and Zerman,
and one of the casting directors for Miss Saigon has stated, the search was
centered on casting the character of Kim, the young Asian girl in the
production. No actor but Mr. Pryce
was seriously considered for [the role of the Engineer]. In fact, one leading Asian-American
actor who was mentioned to play the Engineer reports that his representative
returned a call he received but was never contacted again. [I understand that the Asian American
actor in question was John Lone, who had recently starred in the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor.] Further, it has been claimed that no
Asian actors have had experience in starring roles and they cannot carry the
weight of a Broadway play. This
becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy [sic] unless and until this cycle of casting is
broken.

The
assertion that Equity’s refusal to condone the casting of Mr. Pryce reflects an
anti-British bias is without foundation.
During the last three years alone, Equity has admitted more than 160
British actors as stars, as “actors providing unique services,” as members of
unit companies and as part of the exchange under the reciprocal agreement
between Equity and British Equity.

The
Council’s decision in this matter has been a most difficult one. But Equity must continue to affirm,
indeed press, its policy of non-traditional casting and to object whenever it,
as here, is exploited. To allow Miss
Saigon to appear
as cast without a strong expression of Equity’s displeasure would be a betrayal
of those producers and directors and casting directors who have made every effort
to encourage and enlarge the Asian talent pool by casting Asian parts Asian as
well as casting other roles non-traditionally with Asian actors.

Equity
and its membership are well aware of the threat that we comply with the demand
[to approve Pryce’s casting] or we will be punished by the loss of jobs.

Finally
and once again, Equity states that the producer retains the right to bring this
matter to arbitration. Should Mr.
Mackintosh refuse to avail himself of this contractually prescribed remedy and
cancel or postpone this production of Miss Saigon, lost employment and lost
revenues are ultimately his responsibility.

Equity
has vigorously and consistently raised the issue of opening up the casting of
numerous Broadway productions in order to break down the barriers facing
minority actors. Indeed right now
Equity has tried to schedule a meeting to review the casting practices of not
only Les Misérables, but other plays in which the lack of ethnic actors is dramatically
evident.

Equity
invites the press to take an in-depth look at ethnic casting in the American
theater instead of sensationalizing one example.

The
debate should not end with this decision.
(quoted in Theater Week, IV, 2, August 20, 1990, pp. 17-19)

Mackintosh
had clashed with Actors’ Equity a number of times over the years over other
issues, so he might have seen the union’s decision as more of a power play than
as a principled position. Although
he had the option, as the press release states, to take Equity’s decision to
arbitration, Mackintosh instead indignantly announced the cancellation of Miss
Saigon’s Broadway
production, saying that Equity had denied Jonathan Pryce a job “because of his
race.”

For all
of the ink that Equity spilled writing the announcement of its decision, it
didn’t do very much good, because I doubt that very many people read it. After Mackintosh announced his decision
to cancel Miss Saigon’s Broadway production, most mainstream news outlets castigated the
union’s decision. Much discussion
abounded that the theatre was a place of make-believe, where actors play people
other than themselves, and therefore Equity’s decision was unreasonable. Some misrepresented the union’s position as calling for ethnically specific casting, as though Equity were declaring that only Danish actors could play Hamlet, say, or only Greek actresses could play Medea. But racial discrimination against Asian
American actors in hiring received extremely little attention. This somewhat sarcastic opinion piece
written for Time
magazine by Japan-based Indian-British journalist Pico Iyer (who I think ought to have
known better) captures the tenor of discussion at the time:

[Equity’ was] raising some highly intriguing questions. How can John Gielgud play Prospero when
Doug Henning is at hand? Should
future Shakespeares — even future August Wilsons — stock their plays with
middle-class whites so as to have the largest pool of actors from which to
choose? And the next time we stage
Moby Dick,
will there be cries that the title part be taken by a card-carrying leviathan?

What is
the title of Iyer’s essay? “The Masks of Minority Terrorism.” Yes,
Iyer calls those struggling for racial equality “terrorists.” I’m sure that Asian American actors
will be flying airplanes into skyscrapers any day now.

I was
very dismayed that racial discrimination against minorities in casting — the
motivating issue of the Miss Saigon controversy — was pushed to the background in coverage of
the story. Equity was portrayed as
wrong in every regard, and virtually the only mention of Asian American actors
in the press was all of the supporting (!) roles that they would lose if
Mackintosh’s cancellation of the production weren’t rescinded.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh in a recent photo

Of course,
as the history books now say, Mackintosh prevailed: Equity reversed its veto of
Pryce, who opened the role of the Engineer on Broadway without the eye prosthetics that he wore in London. Also, Pryce won the Tony that year for
Best Actor in a musical, perhaps as an apology by the Broadway establishment
for that nasty little thing that Equity did. (The theme of the Tony broadcast of 1991, hosted by Julie Andrews
and Jeremy Irons, was the British presence on Broadway, which suggested an
attempt to make amends for any perceived anti-British slight on Equity’s
part. If the Tony’s theme that
year had instead been the Asian American presence on Broadway, the show would
have had a lot less to work with.)

Despite
my dismay over how Miss Saigon’s casting controversy played out (there was another
controversy over whether the show’s arguably stereotypical Asian characters
were worth playing in the first place), I was glad to see an apparent effort on
the part of the entertainment industry to increase minority visibility in the
media and to cast Asian roles with ethnically Asian actors. Even Cameron Mackintosh seemed to
accept the core of Equity’s argument: after Pryce stepped down from the role in
1992, his replacements have all been ethnically Asian actors. Of course, the situation today for
minority — and especially Asian — actors is far from perfect, but given the
vilification in the media of Equity’s rejection of Pryce, and the constant
cries of “reverse discrimination,” I’m surprised that the issue of
racial discrimination in casting came to be treated so seriously.

But also
in the intervening years, histories of Broadway and other mainstream chronicles
of the past still mention Equity’s veto of Pryce (when they mention it at all) as a mistake, as an example of
the union shooting itself in the foot, as a “bluff” called by the intrepid
Mackintosh. So, over last weekend,
I was pleased beyond measure when I read this passage in the on-line version of
Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, for a story it printed last year on Miss Saigon’s 25th anniversary
production on the West End:

As far
as Miss Saigon
is concerned, Mackintosh believes his biggest mistake was not foreseeing how
much of an issue the casting of Jonathan Pryce in the leading Eurasian role of
The Engineer would prove in New York. “I said it was a storm in an Oriental
tea-cup, thinking I was being clever. I was actually being stupid.” He now
accepts that those who argued that the character should be played by an actor
of Asian descent had a valid point.

“A valid
point.”That’s what Equity tried
to make in 1990 — and was vilified for its troubles.I don’t think that anyone (including myself) wanted to
prevent Jonathan Pryce from appearing in Miss Saigon. Equity, reports say, was hoping that Mackintosh would take
its decision to arbitration, where the issue of racial discrimination in
casting could be given a proper hearing before Pryce was approved. The fact that Mackintosh didn’t take
the decision to arbitration — the fact that he stubbornly cancelled the
production until Equity changed its position — has long suggested that he saw
the union’s veto as utterly without merit.
I’m glad finally to see in black & white, 25 long years after the
controversy, that Equity’s and the minority actors’ argument has won. Better late than never.

‘The Heat Is On,’ a behind-the-scenes documentary of the original 1989 London production of ‘Miss Saigon’

3 comments:

Well said. It's gratifying when history corrects itself, when those in power have the strength of character to acknowledge their past errors of judgment with appropriate humility and openness. We are all part of the time and cultures within which we live, and both times and cultures are constantly changing.